Movin to the country, gonna eat me a lot of peaches….

Tag Archives: council

Well things have been manic at work and there really hasn’t been anything to look at lately hence the lack of postage again. I went and had a look at the place on Jinglemoney Lane (still love that name) but it’s just a bit too far away for my liking. I noticed the other day that they’ve dropped the price by $20k so I guess they’re keen to sell. If only it wasn’t so far away. Getting back to that dream piece of land I mentioned in my last. I procrastinated a whole bunch about talking to the council about building approval because I didn’t want a yes and didn’t want a no and I understand now what the agent was talking about with it being tricky. I pulled my finger out of my ass and spoke to the council who told me I’d have to get permission from the owner to view their Development Advice form which they had submitted and paid for and also to be able to view their building file at council. So I spoke to the agent who organised that and actually sent me a copy of the Development Advice form which states that yes development approval is possible…

BUT

It basically all hinges on the river crossing. As far as the council is concerned that river crossing has never been approved and hasn’t been structurally assessed. It doesn’t comply with their regulations in terms of signage and barriers etc. Vehicular access is something that they consider with all development applications. I did a bit of research and found out that the next door neighbour had a development application to have the boundary amended by a couple of meters refused because of the river crossing! So I would assume that any building application on “my” land would also be refused.

BUT I’m not going to give up. I’m still going to talk to council and view the file and I’m actually going to see how much it would cost to build a bridge. I had a quick look online and there’s actually some prefab concrete bridge builders so that may be an option. I can only assume that the other 12 or so properties on “my” side of the river are also unapproved because of the river crossing so I could approach them for a contribution to the bridge fund if they wanted to. I could probably put a sizeable contribution towards it or fund the whole thing depending on the cost… that’s how much I want to be able to build on this land! The bridge would still have to go through council approval to be built but considering we would be addressing their existing concerns (the paper said it was noted as far back as 1998) with a proper solution according to their standards surely it would get approval. I’m an optimist can you tell?

I just chuckle at the irony of the amount of times I’ve told someone to “build a bridge and get over it” and now I’m the one that could actually be building a bridge. They better name the bloody thing after me if it happens ;} I’ll keep ya posted!